My Bad Adventure

by JV


Just because something seems like it is easy to get away with, doesn’t always means it is. Hi, I’m Jorell, and this is the story of how I cut school for three weeks straight. It all started halfway through my 7th grade year at Roosevelt Middle School. I wasn’t doing so well; I had bad grades and always got into trouble. Then one day my cousin almost got into a fight so we cut school and went to San Antonio Park. The next day, we cut again. We were in an alley, and then a crackhead started chasing us with a gun. We ran away and he started cussing at us. We ran to the school and stayed there for five minutes, then left again. After that day we always went to San Antonio Park. We would see my friends and my other cousin (by marriage). It was Diana, Kevin, and Chemrhoun, but we just call him Lucky.

After that day, we all just started cutting school day after day. Diana’s mom owned Lee’s Donuts Shop in High street, so she always came to school with like 300 dollars in quarter rolls-- literally. One day we went downtown and my cousins Nadine and Diana went to the bathroom. Diana said, “Can you hold our back packs?” So I said, “Okay.” We took 100 dollars from Diana’s backpack and took the bus to Chinatown. We went to go eat, then we bought stupid thing just to spend all the money. We got back to San Antonio Park around 2. We saw Diana and Nadine there, and Diana said she didn’t care about us taking her money. I went home that day and thought about whether I was going to cut again.

The next we went to Bayfair Mall. It took like three hours to get there. When we got there, they didn’t let us in. We just bought some Jamba Juice and went back to the park. We went to the aquarium and bought some gold fish, then went back to San Antonio Park. There was a drain and we put our goldfish in there and gave them some food. The next week we went to places like Alameda beach and other parks besides San Antonio.
On Wednesday we went to Diamond Park and we went to the trails. It was my cousin Nadine, Diana, Kevin, Lucky, and a girl named Simone, who we called “Squirrel girl,” and me. We were going through the trails, and we had to hop on rocks and climb over things just to get across. It seemed like forever- we were lost in the trail for hours. Kevin and Lucky had to pee, so they went into the trees, and we waited for 20 minutes and they never came back. So it was just all the girls and me. We started running, and then we saw a noose and a chair, and got scared and ran even faster. Eventually we saw a lady that led us out, well at least to the golf course. Then we saw a man, who drove us back to the park, and we took the bus home.

The next day it was Thursday and Nadine, Diana, and I went to Fruitvale Bart Station where we saw my uncle. He called Nadine’s mom to pick us up. We got yelled at and dropped off at school. We were scared to go in the school because it had been two weeks since we’d been, and it was Friday, so we just stayed at San Antonio Park. After school was over, we went back to Roosevelt and saw Nadine’s dad, who checked our attendance. We ran away and didn’t go home for hours. I eventually went home, and Nadine stayed with Diana. I got in big trouble, then Nadine went home and she got in trouble. After this experience I decided I won’t ever cut school again. I guess you should think ahead about the consequences.